Where Obama sought to reduce unnecessary incarceration for minor crimes, Trump signed three executive orders that 'Rolling Stone' called “consistent with his firm but demonstrably false view that crime is out of control.”

Under Trump, Things Don’t Look Good for Prison Reform and Rehabilitation

America has a reputation for dehumanizing rather than rehabilitating its prisoners. Jails are crowded beyond manageable levels. Privatization and for-profit measures have pushed more people into incarceration than ever before; for example, those with minor fines and misdemeanors. The prison population has a sixth-grade education level on average, and without access to prison education programs, released inmates often reoffend when their lack of education prevents them from accessing living-wage jobs.

President Obama had put aggressive prison reform measures in place to help change the system, including helping to launch the Smart on Crime program with former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The Smart on Crime program called for an end to harsh mandatory minimum sentences for minor crimes. In his second year in office, Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, a law that reduced drug sentencing that unfairly targeted African-Americans.

Now that President Trump is in charge, where do things stand? Are Obama’s plans still in play? Are matters standing still or is reform taking place?

Sadly, under the Trump administration, things don’t look very good. Where Obama sought to reduce unnecessary incarceration for minor crimes, Trump signed three executive orders that Rolling Stone called “consistent with his firm but demonstrably false view that crime is out of control.”

Amy Lopez had been hired into the Justice Department as a superintendent by the Obama administration, tasked with overhauling the federal prison education system in the hopes of easing re-entry into and reducing recidivism. In May, Lopez was fired by the Trump administration. After being booted, Lopez declined to talk to the press, saying she wished to confer with a lawyer first, but HuffPost reporters Ryan J. Reilly and Julia Craven had no trouble finding people willing to talk about Lopez’s dismissal. One person who worked on the reform mandate told HuffPost that the program Obama put in place was “shitcanned.” Another said it had been covertly “canned or placed on hold.” Another noted the firing “signals a tragic departure from what had been a growing acknowledgment of the importance of education for those locked up in our nation’s prisons.”

While research proves that prison education reduces recidivism by 13 percent, and that each dollar spent on prison education yields savings of up to five dollars in prison costs per prisoner, Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice Jeff Sessions has stated that prison education programs do not “seem to have much benefit.”

One major aspect of American prisons that is often called into question is the dehumanization of inmates. As proven by the Stanford Prison Experiment, denying prisoners basic human considerations and a measure of autonomy over their lives while guards exploit positions of power radically and negatively alters inmates’ psychology.

In some prisons, inmates are being charged as much as $14 per minute for phone calls to family and friends, even though building positive relationships outside of prison while incarcerated is part of their reform program. Some prisoners leave jail with staggering debt thanks to being charged fees for each day they were in prison. These punitive measures do nothing to help inmates enter society, and greatly increase their chances of reoffending.

The Obama administration worked to remove barriers to former inmates seeking employment and vowed to phase out federal private prison contracts. Obama was the first sitting president in history to actually visit a federal prison.

Is the Trump administration planning on keeping up with Obama’s plans to improve the lives of prisoners through thoughtful rehabilitation? It’s unlikely, considering that private prison stocks surged within hours of Trump’s election to office.

“Private prisons would likely be a clear winner under Trump, as his administration will likely rescind the contract phase-out,” analysts at Height Securities LLC said in a media release.

The analysts were correct. Private prison company Corrections Corp. enjoyed a 60 percent stock surge and GEO Group Inc. jumped up 18 percent following the election, recouping some of the money they lost when the previous administration said it would phase out private prisons.

Trump is not a popular president. Even many of his initial supporters are backing away, scratching their heads at his increasingly bizarre antics. The sad thing is, as this man continues to wield his power seemingly on ever-shifting egomaniacal whims, real people are being crushed by his appetite for profit. And when it comes to prison education and rehabilitation under his administration, the future looks very grim indeed.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014) and Prison Education Guide (Prison Legal News Publishing, 2016). He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com and PrisonerResource.com.

About Christopher Zoukis

Christopher Zoukis, a writer currently incarcerated at FCC Petersburg (Medium), is an impassioned and active prison education advocate, a legal commentator, and a prolific writer of books, book reviews, and prison law articles. While living in federal prison at various security levels, retaliations for his activism have earned him long stretches in solitary, or "the hole."
While in prison, he has earned numerous academic, legal, and ministerial credentials. Christopher is very knowledgeable about prison-related legal issues, prison policy, federal regulations, and case law. He is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Company, 2014) and thePrison Education Guide (Prison Legal News Publishing, 2016).The Federal Prison Handbook is an IndieReader Discovery Awards winner.
A regularly featured contributing writer for The Huffington Post and Prison Legal News, the nation's most prominent prison law publication, Christopher has enjoyed significant media exposure through appearances with the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch, Vice.com, Salon.com, In These Times, The Jeff McArthur Show, The Simi Sara Show,TheCommentary.ca, 88.9 WERS' award-winning "You Are Here" radio segment, and The Examiner.
Other articles and book reviews appeared in The New York Journal of Books, the Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, Blog Critics, Midwest Book Review, Basil and Spice, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, SF Gate, AND Magazine, Truth-Out.org, Rain Taxi, and the Education Behind Bars Newsletter, with content syndicated by the Associated Press, Google News, and Yahoo News.
He established three websites: PrisonEducation.com, PrisonerResource.com, and ChristopherZoukis.com, and was a former editor of the Education Behind Bars Newsletter. In 2011, his fiction won two PEN American Center Prison Writing Awards for a screenplay and a short story. He taught a popular course on writing and publishing to over 100 fellow prisoners.
Today Christopher is successfully working on a Bachelor's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (Business/Law) from Adams State University. Following his 2016 graduation, he plans on attending Adams State University's MBA program. He regularly advises fellow prisoners and prison consultants about legal issues and federal regulations governing the Federal Bureau of Prisons operations. Upon release he plans to attend law school and become a federal criminal defense attorney.
Christopher will not allow incarceration to waste his years or halt the progress of his life. He began his prison terms as a confused kid who made poor decisions but is today determined to create a better life. "We can't let the past define us," he says. "We have to do something today to make tomorrow what we want it to be."

Crime in places like NYC has been dropping consistently since the ’90s and in some cases even before that. This country has had a lot of programs in place to reduce crime and poverty. Examples are LBJ’s “War On Poverty” and the NYC “Safe Streets and Safe City ” programs.

The Trump Administration has been correct with targeting gangs like the MS-13. The concern here is to reduce violent inner city crime. More recently, Chicago has had issues with increments in violent crime. These issues must be addressed with increments in inner city employment, as well as, programs targeted to inner city youth.

Actually, crime in the US is relatively low considering the fact that the population is growing quite large. i.e. 320 million+
Bringing good jobs to inner cities will be more helpful than any other solution. Frederick Douglass pointed to the need to acquire a good education, reading skills and a job in a trade/profession as the surest way out of poverty.

Community policing is a better mechanism to reduce crime, as opposed to, racial profiling or more aggressive police tactics. Ultimately, communities who partner with police will reduce crime while minimizing the downside of such things as police misconduct or racial profiling.

Communities have recourse to the Civil Courts in cases where citizens are unjustly targeted by the police. Better police training is another way to minimize unnecessary police force.